[Freedombox-discuss] Ikiwiki (Was: objectives)

[Les Orchard]

Most of this stuff about blogging/publishing tools has been debated 
before on the list, but my $0.02 again:

On 6/9/11 11:52 AM, The Doctor wrote:

>  It can use flat files on the back end, and yes, it generates pages
>  dynamically using PHP.

IMHO, requiring PHP on a plug computer and using it to serve pages up to 
live web traffic is a non-starter. These things will likely be on 
residential cable or DSL networks, or even on intermittent dialup or 
mesh networking.

> > Ikiwiki uses common VCS (e.g. git or Subversion) as backend,
> > compiles when editing, and serves static html files.
>
>  How processor intensive would updating an Ikiwiki instance be?

Not very, especially when you consider that the processor usage only 
happens at authoring time and not with every web request. Also, the 
static files produced by ikiwiki can be pushed up to an intermediate 
server like Amazon S3 or NearlyFreeSpeech to further deflect traffic 
from a freedombox.

My take on web publishing tools for a freedombox is that they should 
give the owner control over authoring and publishing, but offer the 
option to defer distribution to other intermediaries. You *can* still 
host on your own box, but there's an escape hatch. That way, a 
freedombox owner doesn't need to keep a web host healthy and running.

And, tools that produce static files (like Ikiwiki) help enable that.

--
l.m.orchard at pobox.com
http://decafbad.com
{web,mad,computer} scientist

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